In the short fiction of Angela Carter, the landmarks ofreality disappear and give way to a landscape of riotous anduncensored sensibility. The city of Tokyo turns into a mirroredchamber reflecting the impossible longings of an exiledEnglishwoman abandoned by her Japanese lover. An itinerant puppetshow becomes a theatre of murderous lust. A walk through the forestends in a nightmarish encounter with a gun-toting nymph and herhermaphrodite 'aunt'. Not simply a book of tales, Fireworks is aheadlong plunge into an alternate universe, the unique creation ofone of the most fertile, dark, irreverent, and baroquely beautifulimaginations in contemporary fiction.
Most histories of the personal computer industry focus ontechnology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about theculture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture beingcounter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’sa brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and’70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into ameans for freeing minds and information. In these pages oneencounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est andLSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiringbook by one of the smartest technology writers around.
